Kapture

User Manual

October 2010
Kapture User Manual

1. Introduction

2. Installation

3. Overview

4. Using Kapture

4.1 Naming your tracks

4.2 Configuring Kapture

4.3 Creating, (re)naming and selecting snapshots

4.4 Trigger track

4.5 Copying snapshots

4.6 Saving to disk

1. Introduction
Liine, in association with Minus, are proud to release Kapture for free, a “total
recall” Max for Live device developed alongside Richie Hawtin exclusively for his
Plastikman Live tour.

The sounds and sonic signatures in the Plastikman Live show are heavily reliant
on complex configurations of sends, returns and feedback loops as well as com-
binations of instrument and effect parameters. Our challenge was to build a sys-
tem to manage this huge number of parameters in a live scenario. Kapture is the
solution to that challenge. Similar to a preset management system for the whole of
Ableton Live, it allows you to Kapture the state of your set.

We’re now very glad to be able to release it to the public and to see how other
people use it in performances and in the studio. Kapture is not a polished main-
stream product but something developed for a very specific show. However, we
think that it’s something that many people will find very useful if they are willing to
get their hands a little dirty and tweak it to fit their setup.

2. Installation
Copy the Kapture folder anywhere you like. A tidy place is in the “Max Audio Ef-
fects” folder of your Live 8 Library. When you want to use Kapture, simply drag
and drop Kapture.amxd into your Live set.
 3. Overview

Disk Buttons

Scan Button
Snapshots List
Rename Field
Kapture Button Copy Button

- Snapshots List: A list of the saved snapshots.

- Kapture Button: Create a new snapshot of the current mixer/plugin settings
- Rename Field: Rename the currently selected snapshot
- Copy/Cancel Button: Copy the currently selected snapshot to a new slot.
- Scan Button: Scan the clips in the track named Kapture.
- Disk Write Button: Save the list of snapshots to disk.
- Disk Read Button: Read snapshots from disk

The Kapture plugin allows you to save the state of the Ableton Live mixer and plugin
parameters (with some restrictions). You can save as many different states as you want,
and then instantly recall them. In essence, it’s a “total recall” plugin.

A single state, called a snapshot, has two parts:

Mixer state (for every Audio, MIDI and Return track):

- The level of the volume fader
- The state of the mute button
- The level of all send knobs

Device parameters: for each specified track, the first Device’s (whether an Instrument,
Audio, MIDI or Plug-In Device) parameters are saved.
- For native Ableton devices: all parameters
- For 3rd party Plug-In devices: all configured parameters
4. Using Kapture

4.1 Naming your tracks

The default names in Live (“1 Audio”, “2 MIDI”) are dynamic. If you move a track, it gets
renamed. If you insert a track in the middle of your set, all the subsequent track names
are incremented by one digit. For Kapture to be able to identify the tracks and restore
the proper Mixer and Device states, even if the tracks are moved, each track needs
to have a unique name. Go through your Live Set, and give each track its own name
(without spaces or unicode characters). THIS IS IMPORTANT: IF YOU HAVE SEVERAL
TRACKS SHARING THE SAME NAME Kapture MAY ACT UNPREDICTABLY.

For the first time you play around with Kapture, you can certainly use the default tracks
as-is. Simply be aware that reloading snapshots after inserting/deleting/moving tracks
with default names will cause unpredictable results.

4.2 Configuring Kapture

There is nothing to configure for the Mixer component of each snapshot. The Device
component of the snapshot can be configured to read as many or as few tracks (Audio.
MIDI or Return) as you want. Only the first Device on that track will be scanned. To tell
Kapture which tracks (whether Audio, MIDI or Return) you want to scan, you will need to
edit the Kapture_v1.0.js file. You can do this with any text editor (TextEdit, TextMate, or
whatever you prefer). Look for the following line:

var tracks_plugins = [“TRACK1”,”TRACK2”,”TRACK3”,”ETC...”];

This is for the Audio or MIDI tracks. Replace “TRACK1”,”TRACK2”,”TRACK3” and

“ETC...” with the names of the tracks you want to scan. Always keep the quotation
marks around the track name, and a comma between each. You can have as many or
as few as you want.

For Return tracks, do the same thing with the following line:

var return_tracks_plugins = [“RETURN1”,”RETURN2”,”RETURN3”,”ETC...”];

4.3 Creating, (re)naming and selecting snapshots
Click the Kapture button. A new item called “New Snapshot” will appear in the Snap-
shots List. You can rename it by clicking in the Rename Field, entering any name you
want and hitting return. The currently selected snapshot can always be renamed the
same way.

You can now move your mixer and device parameters to a new setting and create a
second snapshot. Jump from one snapshot to the other by clicking on the Snapshots
List and selecting the snapshot you want.

4.4 Trigger track

Selecting snapshots can be done by triggering specially named clips on the trigger
track. The trigger track is a track in your Live set called “Kapture”. This can be any Au-
dio or MIDI track. It’s important that if you use this function, you only have a single track
named “Kapture”. You can then create clips and rename each clip to the exact name
of your snapshot. Once that’s done, click the Scan Trigger Track button in the Kapture
Plug-In.

4.5 Copying snapshots

For the purpose of copying, the source snapshot data is always the currently selected
snapshot. Click on the Copy button. The Snapshots List will become yellow. Click on
the list and select the destination snapshot. The names are not changed, only the snap-
shot data is copied to the new slot. If you want to cancel the copy operation while the
Snapshots List is still yellow, click the Cancel button.
4.6 Saving snapshots
This function is very simple. Click Write To Disk to write the list of snapshots to disk.
When you reload the Live set, click Read From Disk to reload the snapshots. Only a
single set of snapshots can be written to disk. (as the plugin was built for use with one
Live set). If you want to save and load sets of snapshots for different Live sets, you’ll
need to make a new copy of the plugin in a new folder. (as the plugin only searches in
its own directory). This is potentially an area for the community to develop!

We hope you enjoy Kapture.

To connect with other Kapture users, please visit the Liine forum:
http://liine.net/forum

For more information on Richie Hawtin’s Plastikman Live tour, please visit the of-
ficial website at http://www.plastikman.com